Chanel / Resort 2012

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Once in a while, out of the regular ready-to-wear cycle, Karl Lagerfeld and Chanel lead the fashion pack to a place of fantasia, a total-immersion experience where the meaning of “croisière‘” is at its most glamorous.

“This is one of the most beautiful places in the world, no?” Lagerfeld said, sitting on a deck overlooking the Mediterranean Sea at the Hôtel du Cap-Eden Roc in Antibes, the playground of the rich since the 1920s, and the setting he chose to place “resort” back in one of its original settings on the French Riviera. “This hotel is flawlessly kept, and there is a different dress code here. One has to dress to match the yachts. It cannot be sloppy,” he remarked. “But I didn’t want to do anything retro. People have never had as much money here as they do at the moment, and this is about how to spend your money but spend it in style.”

As he spoke, the sun was setting, shedding a pink light over a pale-blue sea. “This is the time of day when you can tell real diamonds from fake,” Lagerfeld observed. “And here, they are real.”

The Chanel diamonds to which he was referring—shooting stars, feathers, and pins from the fine jewelry collection—were pinned liberally to the shoulders and necklines of narrow mimosa-yellow and lavender tweed suits, the vivid colors reminiscent of the early-blooming flowers to be seen in the South of France.

That was just for starters, though, for as the show progressed, it became one of Lagerfeld’s narratives, with girls seeming to be making their way up from the beach in swimsuits, covered up with Chanel jackets or black and white cashmere wraps, and moving along a garden runway. Kristen McMenamy was among the models—storming along and surrounded by men—in a kind of live trailer for the movie Lagerfeld was about to screen for more 300 guests at a party come nightfall.

And that’s where the serious reveling began. The film (starring McMenamy, Amanda Harlech, Anna Mouglalis, and a cast of Chanel friends) was a drama about inheritances, sparring ex-wives, house parties, casinos, and a soupçon of lesbianism. After that, the party continued with a set from Bryan Ferry, followed by dancing until sunrise among a crowd highly reluctant to wend its way back to reality.